Valentines to a Heart Not Yet Mine
by Austennerdita2533
Summary: The tale of Klaus' Caroline-valentines, beginning with the moment on her 18th birthday when she becomes Not-So-Collateral. How does the dying art form of letter-writing affect a pining monster who hates to love, but will never die?
1. The Haughty Hybrid Hurricane

**AUTHOR'S NOTE** **: My idea is to comprise a limited-ish multi-chapter drabble series where we see snippets of letters ("valentines") that Klaus has written for/about Caroline over the years. It'll flit back-and-forth between past canon and present/future AU situations.**

 **Big thanks to the-doctor-in-a-deerstalker on Tumblr for my fic cover!**

 **HAPPY KCVDAY, lovelies. Enjoy! :)**

 **xx Ashlee Bree**

* * *

"I will slice off his bloody hands at the wrist for this!" Klaus growled, his vise-like grip bruising the neck poised between his quivering fingers. "Where are they?"

He sounded dangerous. Collected and detached in tone, perhaps, but savage in demeanor. Eyebrows, scrunched and distorted, cut across his forehead as sharply and as jaggedly as freshly-carved scars and hollowed out his eyes in the unlighted black of a Jack-o'-lantern, shucking his face free of warmth to leave hunks of discarded humanity looped around his ankles like apple-peel shards. Jaw flexed, teeth gnashed and grated in his mouth like metal claws screeching with the threat to devour—snap, snap. Snap, snap, _snap_!

"Where _are_ they?" he repeated.

Restrained, his blue eyes never blinked in moments like this, but brewed. Black to yellow to red. Dead, dead, dead.

"Tell me where they've gone, sister—" he demanded as he slammed her hard against the bookcases, her feet writhing and kicking as Klaus raised her to eye-level and then pinned her like a tack with his hand. He leaned in all scowls, his hot, salty breath puffing with exertion against her face. "—tell me what he's done with them."

"Nik, p-please. I can't—I c-can't bre—" Rebekah choked.

Swatting at his hand desperately, unable to breathe, gargle noises filled the air as she coughed for oxygen that wouldn't come, for air that her brother wouldn't provide, her eyes growing heavier and heavier with pleading…and pain. Dear, sweet, _deadly_ pain.

Stony and heartless, Klaus left her there—dangling in distress, lung cells starving—dying—popping like bubbles, one after the other, each subsequent second of suspension smothering more of them with carbon dioxide—his iron hold never once slackening. Never once relenting. Not. One. Goddamn. _Inch_.

"I don't know what—"

Rebekah's voice sounded weak; her expression bewildered.

"—ANSWER ME!" he roared, fire spewing from his eyes.

* * *

 **October 2010: Mystic Falls, Virginia**

 _Not-So-Collateral-Caroline,_

 _That_ _'s your name. It's what I shall call you._

 _Not to your face, mind you_ _—no—never to your face. I am not an expressive man; I never was. I never shall be. I tuck away emotions—those nasty, tingling twitches of nagging that rush like streams beneath the skin, coldness and heat bubbling, forever bubbling, in contradictory currents that_ slish _and_ slosh _on the inside, eroding away everything—I tuck them far away. Far,_ far _away in the art that I create…and devastate…with my own rotten fingers that bleed with exertion._

 _I cannot stop. I will not try._

 _I am a builder; I am a breaker. I am an anomaly with two strangling, dead hands and a heart that still beats. And tonight, it beats for you_ _—loud and fast, with the fervency of a sonic blast._

 _"_ _Come," I encourage with eyes, somehow bewitched, and no longer mine, "lend me your ear. Press it to my breast and hear—"_

 _—_ _Your three-syllable name and how it purrs against my chest like feathers: CAR-O-LINE. How it breathes against my skin like the fizzling tide: CAR-O-LINE. How it glosses across my mind, the darkest of skies: CAR-O-LINE. The shivers it elicits with every utterance, how each alteration or inflection unwraps new meaning, new reverence, to behold within its sparkling letters._

 _It has wings, your name. It flaps and flutters and flips. All soft and sensual, it is, with just enough scratch to pluck against my tongue when I speak it to remind me of its sturdy spine, to remind me of the fierce warrior who not only wears it in word, but owns it in skin. In name and woman, you ARE Caroline. You are her, and she is you._

 _Together, you don beauty and grace; you wield a sword, but hide in its sheath. Half of it_ _—half of_ you _—remains collected in disguise by amnesia that keeps you from perceiving the shuddering prowess you possess in blades, not just in fangs; but since I am old, I am not readily fooled. And where I see you…I see me, too._

 _Opposite fragments of the same mirror, we are._

 _Power reflects at me from the sword in your back pocket, drowning in darkness you can_ _'t yet taste in the blood you suck from veins, but it wants air. It craves it. And if you only let me, I can nurture it with wind that unsettles…but never stifles._

 _"_ _Come out if you dare, sweetheart," I whisper softly. Welcomingly. "Come and step into the eternal sunlight with me, for magnificence is meant to shine."_

 _You lift your chin. Bold and brazen, you scoff at Eternal Death, at he who threatens to mistake you for another ordinary victim._

 _"_ _I already do," you challenge, "and it will_ never _be because of you."_

 _You_ _'re right. I know you're right._

 _"_ _This is why I prefer for you not to die," I think with a smile._

 _After a poetic soliloquy where I speak to you of worldly possibility but never once reveal my secret wish_ _, I offer you my wrist_ _—and its fountain of agelessness. It's yours to drink, to deny. And I can sense that you don't understand why._

 _To you, I am nothing more than monstrous scum to be scraped from your infected neck, the_ real _venom responsible for your labored breaths, enslaved boyfriend, and disrupted small town life. You despise me for my ruthlessness; you expect my retribution, but you never once permit fear to break free enough for me to see. You meet me eye-to-eye, word-for-word—a girl hell-bent on deconstructing this pretentious beast with your last breaths._

 _I admire that; I admire_ you _._

 _"_ _I don't want to die," you admit at last._

 _Secretly, I_ _'m proud. Exultant. Because now I know I wasn't wrong._

 _"_ _Have at it, sweetheart," I reply as I unroll my sleeve for you. "It's all yours."_

 _You cup your mouth around my wrist gingerly and pierce your fangs into it tentatively at first, then greedily, all the time watching_ _—waiting—for the betrayal of the monster that never comes. The venom in my lips disappears as I hold you. I pet your head as you lean back against my chest and I smile roses—pink, plush, and pure—for I am something now which I have never been before…surprised but satisfied._

 _Tonight, my blood gives you new life; and your thirst gives me fresh pleasure. Enriched is what we both now are_ _…in death. Cheers to us! Cheers to our interminable forever!_

 _Newly yours,_

 _—_ _Haughty But Hardly Heartless_

* * *

 **Present Day: New Orleans**

"I don't know!" his sister cried.

"LIAR!"

Klaus' nostrils flared as he pressed her more firmly against the books, her back scraping against the shelves' edges, her hair raining with falling volumes and toppling pages, long-forgotten histories cracking against her skull.

"N-Nik, please," Rebekah begged, her voice still thick and suffocated by hands not her own. "Let me go!"

Deranged. Rebekah had never seen her brother like this before—stooped, with mania combusting at the seams—completely unhinged—intolerant, irrational, _inconsolable_ —his soul howling with an emptiness she didn't understand—wailing injustice at the sun, the moon, and the stars; a mourner dressed not in black, but red—his fists thirsting for spilled blood—his growling, collapsing heart calling out for a bypass no surgeon could perform—not once in a thousand years. Those endless centuries full of Mikael's hunting, all of that fear and horror and loathing, appeared to be nothing compared to this torment. Nothing.

"I _need_ them," his voice cracked. "I can't go on without them." His voice dropped and he became more subdued, his last words coming out in whispered anguish, "I can't, I can't, I _can't_!"

"Need what? I don't—I don't know what you mean—"

"—they're all I have LEFT, Rebekah!" Klaus bellowed.

A knock sounded from somewhere behind them, followed by the creaking of an opening door.

"Oh, goodie! Looks like I'm just in time for Mikaelson Family Feud," a chirpy voice quipped. "What did I miss? Shall I fetch you some daggers or will the White Oak stake suffice?"

Klaus whirled to the left, snarling, still pinning Rebekah in place with his arm, and glared at the smirking form in the doorway.

" _You_!"

Kol yawned and plopped onto the nearest sofa with a bag of Doritos.

"Cool your murdery jets for 2 seconds and release our sister, will you? She knows nothing. This is our fight, O'Angry One," he taunted, chewing, "just you and me…so be sure to put up those daisy dukes of yours—I mean fists," he winked.

Dropping Rebekah like luggage, Klaus snatched a poker from the fireplace and plunged it into the depths of the crackling flames, scalding its spokes before flashing across the room, arm swinging, and stabbing his brother straight through the torso. Branding him physically with the miserable heat Klaus felt gnarling apart his insides like cyanide. Pain, pain, pain. Poison, poison, poison.

"I will end you!" Klaus threatened.

He narrowed his eyes and dropped his fangs like daggers.

"You will do nothing of the sort."

Elijah suddenly appeared beside him with fingers entrenched around his wrist and a stern, yet, stoic expression on his face.

"This is uncivilized and unnecessary. Let us be rational—facts first," he said.

"If you kill me—" As his flesh continued to sear, Kol yelped in pain. In surprise. "—you'll never know where to find what you're looking for," he gasped as the poker punctured a rib.

The pressure from Elijah's hand increased in restraint as Klaus' arm quivered with rage.

"This feels like an episode of _Jerry_ bloody _Springer_ ," Rebekah grumbled, regaining her feet with a huff and a hair flip, "so either murder the wretch or listen to him, but just _do_ something already. I'm over the suspense."

"I'm only trying to help you, you blasted beast! Why won't you let me?" Kol groaned.

At these words, Klaus, still white-knuckled and fuming, peered hard into his brother's face searching for the lingering irony that always flickered back from his dark eyes; but when he found none, he collapsed onto his knees and threw the poker behind him with one quick jerk. It shattered the window with a harsh _crack_. Splitting glass in the same way it splits hope—openly.

Licking his lips, he grabbed Kol roughly by the shirtfront, shook him hard, and said, "Tell me where?"

" _Where_?" he repeated more gruffly. "I've never had patience for bread crumbs or treasure maps. You have two seconds—" anger contorted his features; apprehension clouded his tone "—you have exactly two seconds to tell me where you hid my things, Kol—my private, _protected_ possessions."

"Oh, don't be silly." He waved his hand nonchalantly and reached for another Dorito. " I didn't hide them," he crunched. "That would have been pointless—spoiled the fun," he said.

"Then, _who_ did?" Klaus growled, his nostrils flaring.

Quirking his head, squinting at his brother, Kol laughed.

"No one," he shrugged, "they're not here anymore."

Thunder stormed in Klaus' eyes—boom, boom, _BOOM_! Lightning streaked across his face and electrified worry into the wrinkles that sprouted across his face, on his forehead, around his lips. The clouds opened their swirling mouths and pelted his chest with hail. Frigid and stinging and relentless. Breaking windshields. Fracturing bones. Rupturing aortas. He was an uncategorized storm—Hurricane Hybrid—his emotions churning and compounding in directions unknowable…

"They're gone."

"No, no, no, NO!" Klaus rumbled, this one sentence flattening him into roadkill, tires compressing him into particles of gravel.

 _GONE._

One word, four letters. It was emotion—perpetual mourning—nothing more than a void hollowed-out by an "o" that never stopped spinning, never stopped digging deeper and deeper into a grave searching for the rich soil that's no longer there. It echoed with dirt and not daisies; distraction and not delivery; and Klaus was the shovel. His lost Caroline, the expanding hole.

Gone was the last thing Kol felt as hands snapped his neck, cracking his laugh into silence like a whip.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Reviews are wonderful. xx**


	2. Cherry-Kraving

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello lovelies! A few of you were confused last chapter, so I hope this update helps you to better understand Klaus' hysteria. Also, fair warning: given the poetic-letter format I've established so far, you should expect metaphorical nuances. ;)**

 **DISCLAIMER : TVD/TO are not mine.**

 **Happy reading!**

 **xx Ashlee Bree**

* * *

 **Drab Autumn** **Days, 2010:**

 _Ma chérie cherry,_

 _I fold you up; I bake you deep into the pits of my favorite pie and drop my fork against the dish, for it is the piercing utensil you use to tempt me. To relapse me. How dare it prod at my control with those primed prongs, pleading for me to poke you through the middle and claim you with this wolfish hand._

 _"_ _My mouth waters for blood," I tell myself; I want to tell you, "not for cherries."_

 _The rest of my unused silverware I pack away. I force it into the open slots of the dishwasher so I can cleanse it, so the suds will sanitize it_ _—and me—of craving. No spoon of mine will scoop you. No spoon of mine will swaddle you in silver security. No spoon of mine will serve you to the dieting heart that growls beneath my ribcage like a lion, roaring for the forbidden carbohydrates it no longer consumes._

 _I_ _'m sorry my sweet, delectable Caroline, but you shall not persuade me to take another bite:_

 _I will not._

 _I cannot._

 _I dare not._

* * *

 **Present Day:**

The grandfather's clock struck half-past two in the morning as Klaus' fangs slithered into the silky surface of his next scrumptious victim—chocolate cake. Every last mouth-sized crumb and every last streak of icing he gobbled up. He licked them away like the most selfish of serpents, stuffing his over-swelled stomach with flavors too rich and too sickeningly sweet to digest. But tonight, he didn't care; he welcomed the indigestion. Tonight, he willingly traded restraint for gluttony.

"Moderation my foot!" Klaus exclaimed as he tore through the refrigerator impatiently. "I lust—I love—I _live_ for the extreme!"

Excess and onlyexcess would—could—fuel the famine that invaded and persisted in his psyche.

It moaned and groaned. It grumbled and griped in sharp, repeated notes of severity within the cramped creases of his throbbing, tortured mind, each second purring louder. Stronger. Harder and harder to feed.

"I need more," he maintained with a snarl.

Ravenous he became. Ravenous in mind, heart, appetite, and soul he was, unappeased by everything except the one thing he no longer possessed—his secret Caroline cookbook.

Kol stole it. He had plucked the archaic 18th century volume from its unpretentious shelf in the kitchen, a place out in the open the hybrid believed no thief would think to search for valuables, and snatched it without a sound.

"The devious, snooping leech!" Klaus lamented aloud, the treachery still fresh in his mind.

Probably out of mischief or spite, Kol had ripped out some of the vintage recipes. He'd left a trail of shredded paper crumbs that led from the kitchen, winded down the hallway, and promptly ended before the desk in the library for Klaus to follow like a scavenger. Searching for precious treasure never to be procured.

Kol had poured the book's hidden contents into his grimy palms and had sifted through Klaus' words, the secret revelations he'd tucked deep within the book's grooves, the ones he had saved for no one's eyes but his. The tender feelings he had concealed from the one and only heart he desired to make his.

Then, without invitation, his brother had pilfered the entire collection of un-sent letters. He'd folded them back into the envelopes marked with Caroline's name and had discarded them. He had dispensed of them all…to some place unknown.

Lost or destroyed, Klaus' precious valentines had vanished. And as a consequence, so did Caroline.

"I will hunger for the loveliness embedded within that cookbook always," he announced to no one but Darkness. "Forever."

Perhaps his scheming brother didn't realize, but he took it all from Klaus—everything.

Every last word and private sentiment. Every meticulously preserved moment. Every poetic look or thought that glimmered from the depths of her eyes and shaved red compassion across the bleak, rugged tissues of his hybrid heart. Every significant memory bursting full of flirtation, beauty, and imperfect perfections. Every single sliver of promise that bled into the black cursive of his words on the page, each shred of hope carefully contrived, cherished like the most of sacred gifts—Kol took it all.

Gone.

"I will never forget," he spoke to the air, " how like yeast, she bubbled to life before me each time I flipped to a familiar page…desperate for a fresh meal of her."

Resting on a kitchen stool, Klaus' drooped figure cast distorted shadows across the tile floor and heightened the shades of despair that clouded him like an apparition. He never looked more desolate. Or more defeated.

"Never again will I be able to open that book up," he continued out loud, half-gorged and delirious from too much food, "to leaf through its hundreds of pages full of secret ingredients so I can read—so I can recount word-for-word, the new recipes in humanity Caroline inspired me to try."

"Never again will I be able to spend hours studying and searching for the when," he said, "the precise moment when she exposed my biggest lie—"

He paused as the truth smacked hard against his chest, surprise prickling his skin, hunger chafing his empty veins.

"—I still crave dessert."

Scratching his hands through his hair, untidying his curls, Klaus sighed deep. And when he exhaled, his breath cemented the air with pain. Disappointment.

"I still want love, don't I?" he laughed humorlessly, his misery almost rippling in echoes throughout the empty kitchen. "I thirst and starve and suffer for it. I suffer for it every moment of every day. And it's hers—" he lamented pathetically, hopelessly "—it's her love I want most of all," he admitted.

Klaus collapsed his face into his hands and fought off the stinging of his eyes. The heat of his throat blaring acid against his tonsils. The screaming of his heart's depleted taste buds.

How dreary would tomorrow be without hope? Without the possibility of those letters unfurling in his hands? How much would he ache to trace those precious memories like Braille with his fingertips again? Lingering over savory passages with closed eyes, licking his lips as she floated into his mind all blonde and beautiful just as he recalled, goosebumps tickling his skin? How would he defeat this relentless, solitary pining that plucked at his bones like an out-of-tune guitar? Increasing his dissonant agony with each new note? How?

Could he survive today, he wondered? Could he survive knowing that nothing Caroline-tangible now remained in his possession? Could he?

"No," Klaus growled. Gripping his knife, hand trembling with imagined hypoglycemia, he sliced roughly into another piece of chocolate cake. "No, now I must recall falling for her sweetness from scratch."

"And I fear—" Klaus gritted his teeth as the cake passed between them, the fork ploughing the roof of his mouth with metal and chocolate "—I fear that will never be enough…" he declared.

* * *

 _…I salivate. I tell myself that it's my stomach that hungers, and not my soul. Your glucose pumps me full of adrenaline, then leaves me dehydrated and crawling after you with limbs full of salt. Closer and closer, harder and harder I peer into you with big eyes—blue yet bewildered, blunt yet blank; no judgment and all perception—begging for you to stop backing away from me._

 _"_ _I want you to stay," my wretched eyes betray. "I am the dark side of the moon and I need the light from your sun rays. Please," I almost pray, "please, can't you stay?"_

 _You delay, somehow moving farther and farther astray in your flower petal sleigh. At last, you stop. You brush your hand across your cheeks to hide your blush, and to smother the fragrant smile that shines from your lips like the most effervescent of bouquets._

 _I call out. Tripping, I stumble with every arrhythmia of own heartbeat as I chase after you down the pathway,_

 _"_ _What if we're destined to become another one of those beautiful clichés?" I pose to you like a survey._

 _It_ _'s not until I speak, that I feel the sentence stretch out between us and litter your mind worse than a crowded buffet. Your forehead crinkles. It wears a crown of dismay._

 _"_ _Don't worry, we're not," you laugh airily, endeavoring to make the idea sound risqué. "This is real life, not some silly romcom screenplay."_

 _"_ _That doesn't mean I can't whisk you away on holiday—" I drawl._

 _At your defenses, dear Caroline, I am not afraid to flay, for perhaps I_ _'ll knock them down and convince you to sway._

 _"—_ _or that I can't serenade you from the streets of Paris and Rome like a practiced cabaret," I wink and say._

 _For a flicker of a moment, you consider my offer with wild and curious eyes, surprise stuttering your sarcasm into silence now on full-display_ _—probably baffling at all the wonders I've seen, glamor I've tasted, life I've lived and drained—knowing perhaps that I'd escort you to all the best places, all the while delighting in the lilt of your crisp enthusiasm and awing at the jounce of your energetic sashay. But the moment quickly fades into decay. Flying you away from me with the wings of an anxious bluejay escaping down the nearest highway._

 _First, your feet stray from my offered, waiting hand in tap dance, brisk and gay, dropping our connection like it were a dirty duvet. Then, they tread backward all languid, reaching extension, your toes fixed and quivering on knuckles in twirls of ballet. Your mind, I know is made up_ _—but I hear your heart thump-thumping…and it yearns to disobey._

 _"_ _There must be another way," you shrug, your voice tinkling full of ambiguous gray, "like picking someone else—" You pause to bite your lip. "—or leaving here today."_

 _"_ _That I cannot do—" I start adamantly, gazing into you like an x-ray._

 _Can you not tell, sweetheart? You_ _'re the hunter; I'm the prey._

 _"—_ _for only your loveliness rivals the darling buds of May."_

 _Entranced, I look you sharp in the eye and prance toward you like a dumbstruck deer all too easy to slay. I close my eyes. Hold my breath. Wait for the world to rumble with the sound of that_ _'are-you-freaking-kidding-me' bray._

 _"_ _The charming lothario you sure know how to play," you roll your eyes and say._

 _I chuckle at your sass. It_ _'s nothing more than a throwaway that tastes as sweet as sorbet. You believe me insincere and calculating, a man skilled at life's chess and croquet—which I am; but with you for some reason…there's little to no horseplay._

 _"_ _No." I shake my head and dismiss your assumption like I would a valet. "I wear my true face for you, Caroline," I smirk as I convey._

 _"_ _This is me before you. Here I stand—" I bow with honor and integrity, inclining my head to relay, "—I am the Original Hybrid on display. An old fish for you to fillet."_

 _You blink. You fidget. You shuffle. Doubt and confusion stiffening your face like hair spray._

 _"_ _Sure, you are. Okay…"_

 _You, you, you_ _…you've become the one and only person my salt cannot outweigh. Can you not tell, sweetheart, how parched and starved I am today? That it is you who must replenish me with the sugar waves crashing into your bay?_

 _You shake your head once. Twice. Repress a snort and say,_

 _"_ _I'll be sure to cross-out liar, manipulator, and seducer on your resume."_

 _I laugh at your disdain. If only you perceived the_ _'I fancy you' buzzing my mind into disarray, then perhaps you'd stop sweeping me into contaminated pieces of hay or brushing my honest words into a pan to sauté. I speak math, but breathe art; and we're meant to be more than two separate, meaningless blobs of paint on a Monet._

 _"_ _You will believe me," I taunt all charm and grace. "It may take a year, perhaps a century…but you will," I maintain. "Someday…"_

* * *

 **Present: New Orleans**

No one knew; everyone presumed. Everyone presumed wrongly.

"Thick fools you are," Klaus scoffed to himself as he snacked. He raised his dessert-filled fork and saluted the empty kitchen air with a sneer, then took another bite. "Every last one of you."

Intoxicated but sobering, he sighed in relief the moment the chocolate passed across the threshold of his parted lips. One more hit. One more jolt of that flawless tang, that's all he needed. Just one more fleeting reminder that his arteries could shoot honey and not just vinegar.

Klaus' merciless hybrid reputation fooled all of them. Everyone he knew, everyone he encountered believed it was blood that kept his skin from crumbling, his lips from cracking, prevented the walls of his heart from collapsing. But it wasn't.

Blood was _not_ the magical remedy that sustained him in this endless, earth-spinning life…it was sugar. Caroline.

Caroline alone was the chérie saccharine cure that kept him satiated. Invigorated. Without it, without a piece of her, Klaus became something far worse than Death; he became Count Dracula—an eternal man nailed into his coffin alive to suffocate forever in the darkness, a man destined to squeal at each sunrise that wakened him every day without her. Blinded by beautiful memories, but deaf to their narration.

* * *

Minutes passed, then hours. Day one and day two lapsed, then day three. He didn't budge.

"Let me drift into a sugar coma," Klaus begged.

Mourning his lost letters as time blurred into the falling grains of an hourglass, he laid on a marble countertop and decayed into a statue of despair and dessert.

"Wow, your siblings weren't exaggerating, were they?"clucked a female voice suddenly, condescendingly. "You truly are in bad shape."

Too busy feasting on cookies, cakes, and candy like a rabid animal, Klaus hadn't realized that the starkness of another night had bleared into the golden streaks of daylight. Another new day that felt all too familiar—Caroline-less.

"Congratulations."

"What for?" he sneered.

"For becoming New Orlean's first supernatural dessert pig," she remarked sarcastically. "Tell me," she smiled, "are you trying to dethrone Porky or Babe?"

Observing the trash and crumbs, the decimated kitchen, she gestured at his exposed and bloated belly from the doorway.

"What's going on here?" she probed seriously.

Klaus bit into a Snickers bar.

"None of your bloody business," he retorted as he chewed.

The owner of the voice approached his prone form and circled the island where he rested in cautious steps. Assessing him with thoughtful scrutiny.

"I'm surprised. Impressed, really," she continued, her finger tapping methodically on her chin. "I expected to find a hundred bodies sprawled across the floor, not a hundred half-eaten desserts," she explained.

With a sigh, she shrugged.

"I'm not prepared for this."

He remained silent.

"It's been four days, Klaus," she sighed.

Though he registered her voice, felt her presence, he made no effort to acknowledge her.

Instead, like a hospital patient awaiting surgery, he remained on his back and stared blankly at the ceiling fan that swirled above his head. Meditating. Memorizing. Inhaling the unimpeded oxygen blowing into his nostrils. Counting the rotations. Marking each moment of distended misery in his mind like he would a score sheet.

 _One Mississippi…Two Mississippi…_

She squinted down at him.

"Please tell me what happened."

 _Three Mississippi…Four Mississippi…Five Mississippi…_

"Talk to me," she pleaded, concern crinkling her eyes. "I can help you."

 _Six Mississippi…Seven Mississippi…Eight Mississippi…Nine Mississippi…_

How monotonous yet malicious ceiling fan blades appeared as they sliced through the air. _Swipe, swipe, swipe_ they went—fracturing molecules, freeing electrons, generating breezes that tickled the skin like feathers.

"Let me—let me try?" she added in a hopeful voice.

How Klaus wished they'd swipe away this incessant woman.

"No."

Hovering over him, she jumped backwards at this. Eyes wide and arm pressed against her stomach like she'd been punched.

"Listen," Klaus sighed, trying to rein in his impatience, "I'm sorry my siblings inconvenienced you this morning, Camille. But you are neither needed nor wanted here."

He paused, fixing her with a vacant look and taking another bite from his candy bar.

"Please leave," he commanded.

"What?"

"Go."

"This isn't normal—you can't—" Cami stammered, massaging her forehead. "You've been barricaded in here alone for four days!" she said. "It's obvious something—"

He rolled his eyes. He was in no mood for slow comprehension.

"—I said—" Klaus interrupted, clenching his jaw as irritation twitched his lips "—leave me _alone_!" he snapped.

"But you're—"

"—Get the hell out of my kitchen, Camille!" he shouted. His fist squashed an assortment of jelly donuts flat into the counter. "Now!"

With a quick swipe at her mascara, she sniffed and crossed her arms. Standing her ground.

"No."

Her voice rang through the air with conviction. Glaring down at him with blazing eyes, she pulled up a stool and added,

"I'm not going _anywhere_ until you explain why you've decided to eat yourself all the way to hell and back."

As Camille positioned herself near his head, Klaus hissed.

"Are you some kind of undiagnosed hybrid diabetic—" she cocked her head to the side and examined him closely "—or just depressed?" she asked.

Did the woman ever stop? Shut up? Leave a poor, miserable wretch to his own devices?

"For once," he groaned, "can't you just do as you're bloody-well _told_!"

"Not when you're catatonic," Camille replied drily. "Divulge. Discuss. Dissect. That's the formula—start talking, Mikaelson."

"Are you deaf?" Klaus snarled. "I said _leave_! I don't want to talk—I don't want to discuss anything! All I want—" His eyes gleamed from black to yellow. "—is for you to promptly exit my kitchen…my _life_ …and _never come back_!" he bellowed.

Camille stood up and brooded over him with hands on her hips.

"I will not leave you to mope like this. I refuse!" she countered, glaring. "What happened? What did Kol take from you?"

"Get out!"

Enraged, his hand flew to the left and he backhanded a tray of cupcakes. Soaring off the counter ledge, they smacked Camille in the face, smearing icing all the way through her hair, along her cheeks, and down her shirtfront.

She swatted herself clean. Like it was nothing.

"Power? Possessions? Passion?" she prodded without stopping.

"Get out before I trade this Snickers for ignorant, interfering psychologists," he threatened. "Get out, get out, get outtttttt!"

"Talk to me," she pleaded.

" I DO NOT WANT YOU HERE!"

Klaus sprang to his feet…slowly. It took him a minute. Four days of overfeeding isolation had made him lethargic and grouchy, not to mention deranged.

Like the Tasmanian Devil, he tornadoed through the kitchen tearing through cabinets, overturning furniture and upsetting cutlery, banging pans, shredding curtains, paper towels, and jalapeños, demolishing eggs and bags of flour, shoving candy into his pockets, scratching fingernails through his hair until he drew blood. He growled. He howled. His fists pummeled his chest, defibrillating a heart that no longer beat.

"I do not care what you have to say, understand? I DO NOT CAREEE!"

Fangs descending, he simultaneously chucked dessert at Camille and into his mouth.

"—Klaus, calm down. Put the sweets away. Please."

Hunkering behind the refrigerator, fear seeped into her voice for the first time as she dodged the flying food items and gaped upon his mania.

He continued without heeding her last comment,

"—I do not want to see your face or peer into your analytical eyes. I do not want to hear your droning, moral voice bashing against my eardrums. I do not want to feel the weight of your consolation pressing me into the floor like a sopping wet towel—because I do not care! I… _cannot_ … _be_ … _saved_!" he yelled.

As some new emotion washed over him, Klaus' movements suddenly became less agitated and destructive. His behavior, less insane. A box of pecan cookies tumbled from his grip and spilled like rolling dice at his feet.

"Suffer I do; suffer I will," he continued solemnly, his legs collapsing beneath him. "I cannot be saved by you—" he spoke half to himself and he dropped to the floor "—I cannot be saved by anything except—" he cut the sentence short, moaning.

At the sound of Klaus' head falling into his hands, Camille peeked out from behind the refrigerator and slowly crawled toward him. She sat back against the sink cabinets, nudging him softly with her knee.

"Eating your feelings won't help you forget, you know," she sighed.

"Good."

Klaus rubbed at his eyes. Blank. Bloodshot. Blinking. Nothing looked right, but everything felt real. Too real.

"Because I'm _preserving_ my feelings—" his voice was low, lackluster "—not eating them," he clarified.

Camille froze. Her mouth slammed shut. She paused to think for a second, massaging her temples, shaking her mind clear, and then turned to look at him with wide, questioning eyes.

"Wait a minute. I—I don't understand—" she flubbed, confusion creasing her forehead "—you're doing _what_?"

* * *

 _…_ _I pretend I don't remember the delicious tartness you left behind on my tongue the day we first met, but I do. When I close my eyes, I taste the lie—spicy and sweet—as it dribbles down my esophagus with a hint of cinnamon and feasts on my organs like candy-coated cancer. You invade. You persist. You conquer._

 _I am your vein to drink; but you are not mine._

 _I do not know how, but you_ _'ve become the sugar this bitter beast never used to eat. And I cannot help but marvel at how quickly this fact came to be. How completely it has overtaken me, uprooting my weaknesses like the torn ground of a falling tree and displaying them clearly for you to see. You are so captivating, so full of radiance, that I can do nothing but fall to my knees._

 _I crawl and I dig and I search. I hunger. I chew on the cherry seeds you scatter in planting by your feet, because from your perfect flavor_ _—_

 _—_ _I wish never again to be free._

 _I want your steaming crust to melt against the inside of my cheeks and to warm me like the oven you don_ _'t know you are. I want your fruity roundness squishing and grinding between my wisdom teeth, coating me in fresh loveliness I've long since forgotten. I want your sweet and sour wrestling for that one particular taste bud. I want your pinch, your punch, your pit. Licked, swallowed, and digested, I want you all._

 _I want you_ _—the whole damn cherry, the whole damn pie._

 _But never can I have you. Never can you be mine. Never can you be anything but the irresistible dessert I must deny._

 _Never to be yours,_

 _—_ _Krazily Kraving_

* * *

 **A/N : Not sure I'm satisfied with this, but I tried. I highly intensified Klaus' derangement over these lost letters, I know, but he's not a sane individual. Plus, it's fun to imagine him going through the stages of loss/grief over something Caroline-tangible, isn't it? ;)**

 **Reviews would be lovely. xx**


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